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Green IT is the most important thing for us currently

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Hero Honda Motors, the worlds largest manufacturer of motorcycles, is

adopting green in a major way. Over the past year or so, driven by Vijay Sethi,

VP (information systems), the manufacturing major has been putting into place a

robust green strategy that not only looks at the IT processes but even beyond.

Excerpts

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How important is green IT at Hero Honda?



To put it simply, Green IT is the most important thing for us currently from

a corporate perspective. Around 8-10 months back we revised our IT policy and

included green IT as the key thing. Even the top management is involved in

discussing the various aspects. Our vision of the IT policy underlines the

significance of green IT. Being a socially responsible company, we will take

all necessary steps for being environmentally friendly.

Is there more to green IT than cost benefits?



We agree that cost reduction continues to be one of the key drivers of

adoption of green IT, but at the same time one cannot ignore other benefits that

emerged in our case. As a socially responsible organization, we put a lot of

focus on caring for society and the environment. And our focus on green IT

provides an excellent means for that. On the employee front, adoption of green

IT gives them a sense of satisfaction and ownership. They realize that they are

also trying to contribute at their level in saving our environment. From the

organizations perspective we are continually adopting initiatives that help in

improving the productivity in the organization, for instance, using

videoconferencing and collaboration tools. Green IT also helps the IT team in

the day-to-day management of the IT infrastructure, for instance the number of

servers to be managed gets reduced as we virtualize, or the number of printers

to be managed gets reduced.

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What green IT initiatives have you undertaken in the last one year or so?



We look at green IT from three perspectivesthe IT activity/equipment being

used, the organizations business/operation perspective, and of course, the

impact on the environment. As for the IT equipments being used in the

organization, we are looking to reduce energy consumption since this is in IT

control directly. We have replaced traditional monitors with TFTs, moved into

energy efficient data centers with power management features. We implemented

consolidation, waste disposal policy and even printer usage reduction. We

created a lot of awareness in the company about reducing wastage of paper in

printers and a lot of people actually volunteered in choosing a paper free work

policy.

We are also working toward introducing videoconferencing and collaboration

tools like WebEx. The critical issue for us here is how to reduce travel. We are

also running a campaign in our company on how to save electricity consumption by

turning off monitors when not working, shutting down lights when not in office,

etc. And last but not the least, IT does help in R&D to make the bikes more

efficient and environmentally friendly.

What is on the anvil in terms of green IT?



We are trying to green our applications which means that we are trying to

consolidate our applications wherever possible, and that means ruling out dead

applications thereby making the IT infrastructure more efficient. We are also

going for energy audit and are trying to use e-learning tools wherever possible.

The e-learning tools would reduce traveling time even during the training period

so that employees can get training from wherever they are. However, it is

important to realize that green IT initiatives can not be a one time affair. We

need to ensure a mechanism to sustain the same. As we move forward in 2009, we

are currently in the process of formulating a formal Green IT Roadmap for the

organization.

Some of the other initiatives that are planned for the coming year include

increasing usage of videoconferencing and collaboration tools for reducing

travel and saving on time and energy; creating further awareness in the

organization; and imparting more thrust on a paper-less office.

Stuti Das



stutid@cybermedia.co.in

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